As promised I am finally starting my food blog. It has been a very busy month for me preparing loads of food for a lot of private clients, but finally I took a break and came to visit my friend in Italy. To no surprise my first recipe is a symbol of Italian food, but with a healthy twist. So here it is , an absolutely gorgeous addition to your healthy dinner party - Cauliflower & Buckwheat Pizza, with Celeriac & Wild Mushroom Sauce , Char-grilled Veggies, Sunflower Parmesan and Truffle Oil.
I am going to walk you through the recipe , as well as share some valuable tips. I believe that intuitive cooking is something very important to learn in food. So lets make one of these beautiful pizzas together!
For the base we will need:
1 Healthy looking Cauliflower (Small)
1 1/2 Cups of washed Buckwheat Groats
1/2 Cup Flax Meal
1tbps Olive Oil
White Pepper To Taste
Sea Salt To Taste
Lemon Zest
Fresh Sage
Fresh Parsley (Optional)
Water
For The Sauce:
1/2 of Red Onion
1 Cup of Roasted Celeriac
1 Cup of Brown Mushrooms (Wild Mushrooms would work even better)
Tamari to taste
Lemon Juice to taste
Lemon Zest to taste
White Pepper to taste
4-5 leaves of fresh Sage
2 tbps of Olive Oil
To start lets prepare the cauliflower by washing it and getting rid of all unnecessary leaves then steaming it until soft. You can skip this step all together, and rather use raw cauliflower at this stage, which should give you slightly crispier edge to the crust, so it is entirely up to you. Process the buckwheat in a food processor until course flour consistency. Add cauliflower , flax and remaining ingredients. Now season to your liking, and I would like to get you into the habit of tasting your food while you prepare it. So make sure you taste it and adjust accordingly. Process everything allowing cauliflower to bind with other ingredients to create I nice crumbly texture. At this stage you have to evaluate of water is needed . If you steamed your cauliflower most likely you won't need any additional water. With dry cauliflower you won't have enough liquid to activate the flax.
By now your oven should be nice and hot at around 200 degrees. Line your baking tray with some baking paper and drizzle it with some olive oil. You will need a right tool to spread your batter onto the tray. I use an offset spatula for that. If you haven't got that, it might be a good time to get one :) It is one of the most useful kitchen tools you would ever buy. It just makes jobs like that so much more easier!
You can make it round or square, there are no rules for that. I like to spread it perfectly round, and keep a nice edge around for the sauce to sit in.
Once the pizza crust has taken it's shape it is time to stick it into the oven. We need approx 20min to really form a crust.
While crust is in the oven It's wise to put celeriac to roast as well as the toppings. Peel celeriac and cut into rather small chunks to aid cooking. Season it with sea salt and pepper drizzling with some olive oil too. Do the same with zucchini, red onion, and mushrooms. Put it in the oven with the rest. Meanwhile chop your onion and heat the saucepan with some oil. Place your onions in and stir it on the medium heat until golden. Do not let it burn! Add garlic for a couple of minutes, then mushrooms, let them sweat a little bit, then add Tamari sauce. Depending on the brand you use, make sure it is not too salty. You want to add depth to the dish but not to make it overly salty. By now you should have your crust ready as well as other veggies. Remove everything from the oven on to the working surface. Lets get back to the sauce! Add celeriac to the hot saucepan with your mushrooms and onions, spin through for a couple of minutes then add 1/2 cup of water or vegetable stock (ideally), reduce the heat to minimum. Add chopped sage and cook for another 3-4 minutes. Once ready turn off the heat add pepper, fresh squeeze of lemon juice and some lemon zest. Use hand blender or pour mix into the jug and start blending. Add a touch of olive oil as you increase the spread to emulsify the sauce. It will give it that beautiful glossy look.
*NOTE - It is always wise to precook your toppings as it will deliver much better result.
For the cheese I went great lengths to create sprouted & fermented sunflower parmesan sheets, but you don't have to. You can make a simple cheesy crumble by processing sunflower seeds in a food processor with some nutritional yeast salt and lemon. Adjust lemon and salt to your liking. Just by playing with these simple two ingredients, you can make nutritional yeast sing like cheese :P However if you wish to go a full way here's my method for a delicate seed parmesan. You will need:
1 Cup of sprouted Sunflower Seeds (This will take you good couple of days, but it is well worth it!)
1 Capsule of Probiotic Powder
1 tbps Nutritional Yeast
3/4 cup Water
1tsp of Yellow Mustard Powder
Add everything to high speed blender and blend until super smooth. Adjust water if needed. *NOTE - We are adding probiotic straight into dehydrator, as that will be enough to ferment the paste, cutting the waiting time by 1day. Again using offset spatula spread the mix evenly over non-stick dehydrator sheet. Do not worry about perfection here. We are going to break it all in nice sheets. No it doesn't replace real parmesan, it is a new thing altogether! But nevertheless beautiful and sharp, cheeselike flavour will surprise you.
Now the fun part! Spread the sauce onto the base, as thick as you like, spread all the vegetables around the pizza crust and stick it into the oven for another 5 min on 250 degrees. Once the pizza is out decorate with baby spinach or rocket and finish with our parmesan cheese. Voila!
Bon Apetit ;)
Follow me for more beautiful recipes, and if you try to make this pizza share your experience with me in the comments below.
Thank you for reading.